Spring Comes

Anxious and unsure, Tohru answers a summons to the family estate and finds Hatori guarded and distant, urging her to keep away from the Sohmas before the curse drags her down. What looks like harshness turns out to be grief, and over the course of their meeting Tohru learns why he shields others by pushing them off, and glimpses the woman he was made to forget.

Greeted at the estate by Hatori and Momiji, Tohru is advised to cut ties with the family lest the curse burden her. While Hatori steps out to receive a visiting Shigure, Momiji quietly tells Tohru that Hatori once had to wipe the memories of the woman he loved. Later, on a walk together, Tohru stumbles, and Hatori's reflex to catch her turns him into a seahorse, the form of the zodiac dragon, knocking him unconscious.

As Tohru tends to him, Hatori relives meeting his assistant Kana two years earlier and the two months of happiness that followed, even after she learned his secret. Their bond shattered when Akito flew into a rage, all but blinding Hatori's left eye and twisting Kana's mind into believing she was to blame. Broken by guilt, Kana fell ill, and at Akito's urging Hatori erased her memories of their romance to spare her.

Waking, Hatori overhears Kana, now engaged to someone new, and takes quiet comfort that she has moved on. When he asks Tohru what becomes of snow once it melts, she answers that spring comes, the very words Kana once gave him. The echo unsettles him, and recognizing how alike the two women are, he worries about what might befall Tohru should she ever anger Akito. He leaves her with Shigure, and after catching a fleeting sight of Akito, Tohru asks about the curse, only for Shigure to put the question off.

The episode combines chapters ten and twelve, directed by Daisuke Takashima in Japanese and Caitlin Glass for the dub, scripted by Bonny Clinkenbeard and Jeramey Kraatz over Again and Lucky Ending. Its title comes from a line of Tohru's, and the ending swaps in the seahorse form of the dragon in place of the usual tiger and sheep. The anime expanded several moments in the Hatori and Kana flashback, including their seaside scene and the violence of Akito's outburst.